Slitherine

I originally posted this to the beta test forum and was asked to post this to the open forum.
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I played a game with Andy Bascombe on Tuesday night last week. He'd watched us play one game, but as the others were not available for our regular slot and Andy is my next door neighbour we decided to throw a few troops on the table. This turned out to be very roughly two full size armies of Ottomans and Hungarians. Once I have explained the basics Andy was off and running in no time.

What surprised me was that he was able to make very sensible generalship decisions without fully understanding the rules. He wanted to push foward with the infantry, swing his Royal Banderium behind them and attack the Janassaries in the open (who were running for a piece of rough going like their lives depended on it). He also understood that the undrilled knights could not do this, but that the drilled knights made a pefect mobile reserve (one glance at the CMT chart convinced him of this).

He may have lacked understanding at a technical level about the exact details and how to do certain things, but he was essentially in control of the army for the whole game, understood what was going on and intrinsicly knew what would and would not work.

Personally I think this was the clearest indication yet that the rules fundamentally work, and that all is really required is more work to clarfiy, simplify and remove any final whiffs of "cheese" (or situations that don't immediately make sense to the vast majority of long time wargamers).

That is the best news yet: that a reasonably clever wargamer can start making and executing sensible decisions right off the bat. Is this conclusive evidence that the rules are not written in Barker-ese? (In a way that is sort of disappointing. It has always been a source of pride to read and understand a DBM paragraph.)

Do the interactions among the troop types appear to be correct to you? That is, your opponent wanted to use mounted (Royal Banderium) to attack archers (Janissaries). One has the notion in one's head that archers should welcome the chance to shoot at mounted rather than try to run away to terrain. Or am I missing something?

Marc

marc wrote: That is the best news yet: that a reasonably clever wargamer can start making and executing sensible decisions right off the bat. Is this conclusive evidence that the rules are not written in Barker-ese? (In a way that is sort of disappointing. It has always been a source of pride to read and understand a DBM paragraph.)

The play-testers have been very frank and forth-coming with comments about common-sense and ease of understanding. And to be honest the rules writers have started well and taken on board the comments. I believe the next phase of revisions is to continue improving the ease of reading of the rules. There pretty good at the moment to be honest, certainly better than DBM - but the writing team is a determined bunch of people and they aren't satisfied with just good enough. Plus some of us play-testers won't let them rest either.

marc wrote: Do the interactions among the troop types appear to be correct to you? That is, your opponent wanted to use mounted (Royal Banderium) to attack archers (Janissaries). One has the notion in one's head that archers should welcome the chance to shoot at mounted rather than try to run away to terrain. Or am I missing something?

Marc

Most of the interactions seem to be good to me - although I am not historical expert. There are a few that need improvements and tweaks, but they are being worked on as we speak. In this case, the Janissaries welcome the chance to shoot at mounted, but these are fully armed knights who are the effective Royal Bodyguards, and therefore well trained and exceptionally well motivated. If the Janissaries don't break them up in the shooting, then things are going to get a little messy for them. In the end, the Janissaries never made it to the rough going (one base of the battle group did). The Royal Banderium hit them at an angle, and although the initial shock did disrupt the Janassaries, their superior morale meant they held on until a unit of Timeriots (turkish cavalry) could charge the Royal Banderium in the flank. Even so they survived a couple of rounds of fighting - those Royal Banderium don't go down without a fight!

To finish the story the hungarian Clipeati drove off the turkish mounted in the centre, and the household knights pushed a couple of units of turkish cavalry into a stand up fight - where they promptly trounced them. Even so, the turks were able to threaten the knights flanks, and caught a couple of battle groups of Serbian Husars and Tartar skirmishing light horse who were vainly trying to protect those flanks.

It was nip and tuck the whole way - a classic skirmishing cavalry action nipping at the flanks, but succumbing to direct confrontation with steady (and high quality) knights. In the end I reckon honours even.[/quote]

It was nip and tuck the whole way - a classic skirmishing cavalry action nipping at the flanks, but succumbing to direct confrontation with steady (and high quality) knights.

I really like to hear that. One of the things I enjoy most about DBM is "nipping at the flanks" with mounted. Hmmm, where is Jer when you need him?

Marc